How to Gauge When It’s Time to Work With a Recruiter

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Recruiters can help you better navigate the talent market and fill positions easier, but there are some important aspects to consider before hiring a recruiter.

You might look at all the available resources for recruiting and hiring, including online job boards, social media platforms, and in-person networking opportunities, and wonder why you might benefit when choosing to work with a recruiter. It’s a great question and well worth exploring as you strive to do the best for your business, current employees, and job candidates.

It all comes down to finding the best candidate to fill each role, and an executive search recruiter can streamline your efforts and deliver the results you want on your timeline.

Do you think it’s time to explore working with executive recruiters to find the best job candidates? Let’s explore how to gauge when it’s the right time to reach out for recruiting reinforcements.

When Should You Start Working With a Job Recruiter?

As you know from experience, the cost of hiring a new employee begins long before their salary goes into effect. The costs to your business begin calculating as soon as you realize you need the right person to fill a specific and crucial role. No savvy business leader or HR department takes this task lightly since finding a suitable candidate with the right qualifications and potential to fit into your company culture is paramount.

According to a 2019 article from Senior Contributor John Hall at Forbes, “the cost of turnover can kill your business and make things less fun.” The actual monetary cost of turnover can add up to 33% of an employee’s annual salary, so you want to do everything possible to prevent any departures of new hires. Much of the necessary preventive measures begin during the recruiting process.

If you and your hiring team have recently encountered a consistently sluggish or ineffective hiring process or an increase in turnover, you might need some additional perspective from a recruiting professional.

7 Scenarios That Indicate Your Business Can Benefit from Working With an Executive Recruiting Firm

You might still find yourself wondering if working with a recruiter vs applying directly is the right strategy for your business. If so, you might benefit from exploring some real-world scenarios happening to businesses everywhere, moving them to create a partnership with a talent recruiting team that has their best interests in mind, working to find candidates with an eye toward productivity and longevity.

Here are seven scenarios to help you determine whether working with a recruiter is right for you right now.

1. You Need to Find (Passive) Talent Not Currently Searching for a New Opportunity

Most people have heard the term “headhunter.” Sometimes it is necessary to reach out to specialized candidates who don’t consider themselves candidates at all. If you know that your job position is attractive but aren’t getting any response because there is a dearth of talent in the field, you might need to find talent not currently searching for a new job opportunity. Here, you need to present your organization’s opening as a true opportunity to those who might be content in their current position. A recruiting expert can help execute this maneuver successfully for you and the candidate.

2. You Are Encountering Scarcity in the Marketplace

The chances that you have encountered—or soon will encounter—a scarcity in the marketplace for some roles is not surprising. Such a scenario can happen at any time for one reason or another. However, in a post-ongoing-pandemic recruiting landscape, things have become more complicated than ever before. You’ve probably learned that many employees, having had a taste of forced remote work in 2020, are now weighing their options and seeking opportunities for continuing remote work or some hybrid work solution. Such a situation might translate to scarcity, depending on your organization’s ability and willingness to make accommodations for top candidates in essential roles. An executive search professional can help you locate and hire the right candidates searching for the accommodations you can offer them quickly and effectively.

3. You Need Top Performers to Boost Your Organization’s Success

Whether you want to boost success for your business in a particular area, or you need someone in a key position to take your business to the next level, you can definitely benefit from recruiting reinforcements. Who doesn’t want a top performer in any role at any time? But it isn’t as simple as it sounds.

According to the Harvard Business Review, it’s difficult for employers or in-house HR departments to clearly define what a “top performer” is for each role. That’s where an executive recruiting firm comes in, teeming with experts in various fields who understand and can find who you need.

4. Your HR Department Lacks the Time Needed for Effective Recruiting

Perhaps your company is a startup or otherwise still building its HR team, or your HR team is overwhelmed with managing current employees. In either case—or for any other reason you might encounter—there are times when your HR staff can’t eke out the time to find the right person for a position. The hiring process can be long, involved, and expensive. The time-to-hire calculation is the period of time starting from when you first post your vacancy in your chosen venues—job boards, social media platforms, internal company bulletin boards, etc.—to the date that your new employee begins working for your company. Ideally, working with a job recruiter will expedite the process, recruiting top talent with peak efficiency.

5. You Don’t Have Enough Employees Devoted to Full-Time Recruiting and Hiring

Similar to the previous point, you might not have adequate staffing to devote to full-time recruiting and hiring. You might not have created an official HR department that understands HR and hiring laws to maintain compliance and avoid any issues leaving your organization open to discrimination complaints or any other negative situations. In such cases, a job recruiting firm can give you the support you need to hire safely, effectively, and in compliance with regulations, policies, and standards.

6. You Need to Conduct a Confidential Search

If you haven’t needed to conduct a confidential search yet, you might wonder why it is necessary. There are multiple reasons you might need to do so, including:

  • Internal Replacement. If you plan to release someone from a position, you don’t necessarily want them to know that you are actively searching for their replacement.
  • A Business Has Branding Issues. In other words, sometimes companies have reputational issues and come across as unattractive to candidates.
  • A Highly Attractive Business. If a company with strong public relations and a popular brand is hiring, its HR team will likely become inundated with candidates.

Executive search firms can help you navigate any of these confidential search scenarios and any others you might encounter.

7. You Have No Recruitment Strategy

Whether your business is new and you haven’t yet developed a recruiting strategy, or your HR team is experiencing some lulls as far as effectiveness, you probably feel that you have no recruitment strategy. By teaming with a recruiting firm, you can plot out a recruitment strategy that aligns with your organization’s goals, culture, and long-range plans.

Experienced Executive Recruiters Understand That Effective Hiring Is a Blend of Art and Science

You might wonder what it means when someone says that hiring is an “art and science.” Basically, your hiring team might lean more extremely one way or the other, meaning that they are more inclined to hire someone based on their instincts about a person’s ability to fit into the culture and perform a job, or that they focus on specific qualifications and requirements without looking at the full prism of the candidate.

Top executive search teams understand how valuable both approaches to finding the right candidate are.

Let PeopleSuite Help Your Organization Boost Your Recruitment Strategy!

Let our PeopleSuite team help you find the right candidates on your timeline, so you can focus on what you do best. We offer a robust suite of talent-related services to meet and exceed the growing demands of your growing organization.

Reach out to us to schedule a consultation and learn how we can help you find the candidates you need when you need them.

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